"The Making and Un-making of a Marine"

The Third War

The first New Millennium War started in Afghanistan; the second New Millennium War began with our invasion of Iraq; the third is being fought inside us. Some say we are winning these wars, others say there is no way to win and that we should cut our losses. Those who think we are winning collect their observations from observable results like the number of battles won and body counts. Those who think we're not winning cite the fact that no one is able to see the end of these conflicts, that some men and women who have served in this war are not coming home, and that the cost of the war has entered each and every household in America. It's a stalemate.

Either way, it is the third War that's concerning me, the one taking place inside our hearts and souls. There are no IEDs, no sniper fire or suicide bombers in this Third War. There are no tallies for the cost of this Third War. No count of lost souls, no assessment of heart break or spiritual fatality. Not a tax or a toll being collected from all the deaths for which we are responsible: more than 4000 US soldiers; Iraqi and Afghani soldiers and civilians are dying in great numbers.

Back home we may believe that if we do not watch the news on TV or read the newspapers we are not affected by these deaths. Like the fisherman who casts a large net into the ocean, he does not know what he has caught until he brings it in. Americans have cast a very large net and we have only brought it part way in. What has come up over our gunnels so far are wounded soldiers carrying our burdens for the killings they have done for us. The spiritual pain they carry we call Post Traumatic Stress DISORDER (PTSD). We call their spiritual pain a disorder in order to shift our responsibility for all that killing back onto our soldiers. We make them feel that they are not being mentally strong enough to kill and be okay with it.

We are not aware of it, but these soldier causalities are adding in our internal Third War. Most of us, who are not psychopaths, still have a conscience. In other words, we know inside what is right and wrong. By remaining in denial about the reality of these New Millennium Wars, we repress our humanity. And this repression is now seen in our country's lack of compassion for each other, with our fixation on violence in the media, with our insatiable appetite for more things to distract us from the every widening chasm of internalized pain we are ignoring. We maintain our denial by hiding from the well-censored media or deny that it is within our control to help stop the wars or even offer to fight in them. In order to maintain this denial we must turn away from helping those who have been wounded in these Wars. If we were to help our wounded soldiers, we'd destroy our protective denial by having to face the reality of what we are doing to the Afghani and Iraqi people as well as to our own soldiers.

I can only hope that somewhere in our unconscious we will become aware that we have been registering the tolls of these Wars. If we were to allow ourselves to see and feel the inhumanity we are responsible for in our world we'd then have to take ownership that this inhumanity exists within ourselves. If we allowed ourselves to be conscious of this fact it would inform us in the difficult decisions Wars present. If we remain in denial these decisions are not as difficult.

How we US citizens behave in today's world is a constant reminder that we are no further along than our caveman relatives. What we today call primitive societies may in comparison be more evolved than we are. Because of high-tech weaponry we believe we have advanced. The real truth is our so called advancement allows us to kill larger numbers more efficiently. What remains true in the Wars we are now fighting is the utter brutality, and the price we all pay is bodily and spiritual carnage.

How do we stop the carnage if we think that the livelihood of the bomb-makers is more important than the slaughter made by their bombs? How do we stop the carnage when we ask our warriors to fight in these wars and do not take care of them when they return? How do we hope to stop the carnage when we have grown so narcissistic that only our own individual avoidance of pain is more important than the need for humanity in the society we live in?

Confronting this hidden, internal Third War involves the same qualities that every good soldier needs to go into battle. First, we must have the belief that recapturing our humanity is worth risking our lives. Second, we need the courage to go to battle for ideals we know are true. Third, we must have a faith and trust in the humanity that lives within ourselves and other human beings. If we do not, we will be annihilated by the equivalent of an atomic weapon in the Third War, the one called self-hatred.

Larry Winters